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Thursday, 4 June 2015

Memorabilia 2015

Dr. Vedant Pandya releasing Memorabilia 2015

The publication of Memorabilia is one of the many traditions of the Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University. For last five years, students are publishing this booklet. The booklet is collection of creative and critical writings of the students. Poems, short stories, paintings, pencil sketches, cartoons, posters, abstracts of research papers published by students, reviews of books / movies, critical observations of current affairs etc are some regular columns in this booklet. The Compilation and Editing, which is very difficult task, is also carried out by a group of students. They have to collect contents from students, compile it, edit it (where ever necessary), convert into common format and make it ready for publication on the Annual Function Day. The Memorabilia is released by the guest on this day. The Memorabilia is one of the many ways to evaluate students' creativity and critical acumen. It gives platform to students to publish their critical thoughts and creativity. That's fine. But what is more important is the ability of the chief editor and the team working for the Memorabilia. It is ultimate test of this group of students. From working in team (getting works done by each other, persistently requesting classmates to give their contributions, managing time from regular lectures and other learning assignments) to solving problems of compilation, editing and working on front page design to people-problems which are the most toughest nut to crack, these students have wonderful learning of 21st century skills. Yes, we, at Dept. of English, believe that the students in today's classrooms are going to work and live in 21st Century. Hence, the learning of these skills should be incorporated in daily activities and routine teachings at the Department. For this purpose, we have identified the 21st Century Skills Map which is the result of hundreds of hours of research, development and feedback from educators and business leaders across the nation (USA). The Partnership between 21stcenturyskills.org and National Council of Teachers of English has come up with interesting map of these skills. They are:

It is this group of students who work on this Memorabilia, who are not only tested on these skills, but it also provides them to hone these skills. This year, Poojaba Jadeja and group of students have done quite satisfactory work. You can have a look at Memorabilia 2015 here under. As it is embedded from slideshare.net, if it takes time in loading, you can click here to open Memorabilia 2015 in new window.

From the Desk of the Head of the Department (Form Memorabilia 2015)

The withering signifies an end of things. The end suggests new beginning. Nothing ends in itself without stirring up the trace of new beginning. Now, as the batch 2013-15 is passing out, we look forward to see them marching ahead in their lives with renewed power, vitality and energy. As we have seen in past for some years, the number of girls in the department are outnumbering boys. What was so curious to observe was that they did not outnumbered boys only in arithmetic numbers, but also in classroom discussion, interaction and in debating views and counter-views. It obviously proves that given an opportunity, the female of the species would outsmart their male counterpart!

Questions! Yes, it is the questions raised by students, which make teachers happier than happy. This year, in both classes, there were several such happy moments. Especially, the participation of Riddhi Jani, Poojaba Jadeja and Lajja Bhatt was noteworthy. Yes, we missed Amrutha Reddy, who surely would have raised the level of interaction in the subsequent semesters, had she not left during second semester.

Overall, the participation of students was encouraging. They were always on their toes, rushing to complete several offline and online tasks, apart from managing several other affairs of Department. With all the burden of routine work, they actively participated in co-curricular activities. The students in the year 2014-15 represented in 39 events! We are proud to see that Saryu Baraiya and Kaushal Desai represented department in 11 events, each.

We run Online Discussion Forum, to engage students with learning and to connect classroom with ‘real life’ situations. During the year 2014-15, twenty-four discussion threads well opened for email discussion. We are glad to see 402 emails being exchanged with total of 75,355 (seventy five thousands three hundred and fifty five) words used by students. Drashtri Mehta remained most active student on this forum with 5,882 words written in various email discussions!

Apart from the academic activities, if there is anything that recurs in my memory, at this moment, it is Gardening and Library Committee. Under able guidance and leadership of Sejal Vaghela and Saryu Bariaya, both committees did extraordinary work. Sejal Vaghela was, always, found forward thinking and planned all days of gardening quite meticulously.

I remember in no particular order the shining examples like that of Pratiksha Solanki ( in displaying situational leadership in managing Picnic), Namrata Gohil (in quest of difficult topics for presentation and assignment), Vinod Rabhadia (commitment to participate in Cross Country at Botad), Kaushal Desai, Shubhda Parmar and Lajja Bhatt (reading and publication of research papers), Hitesh Parmar (for his passion for General Knowledge), Arati Maheta (for her punctuality) and many other students whom I miss to mention here, which does not mean they have not contributed. There were many other talented students in the class but, may be, because of other priorities, they were not able to give their 100% to the Department. It is our loss and failure to see that we could not get 100 % engagement form 100% students.

I would like to give special congratulations for the perseverance of Shabana Khalani - the Malala of our class - for her persistence efforts to continue with study in spite of her marriage, becoming a mother of a child and failing in exams. It requires out-of-the-world courage and bounce-back ability to do what she has done!

It would be nothing less than ingratitude if i do not thank all those students (Kinjal Patel, Urvi Bhatt, Shital Italia, Drashti Mehta and Kaushal Desai) who spent their valuable time for Murals. A special thanks to Sejal Vaghela for an innovative idea to draw colourful mural near the entry of the Department.

This memorabilia is the hard work of Poojaba Jadeja. Without her painstakingly collecting content form all students, minute editing and creative organization, this Memorabilia would not have seen the light of the day. I am thank full to all other students who helped in this Memorabilia (they are acknowledged in her note so i am not repeating names), specially for the creativity in designing front page.

Shubhda Parmar, the G.S., should be commended for her able leadership qualities. She managed all the affairs and activities efficiently. She led from the front and kept the class together.

Being a believer in the Darwinian theory of evolution, I firmly rely on the fact that every new generation is smarter than the previous. Similarly, this batch was better than the previous batches. We hope to see new batch of students outsmart this batch . . . but till then we will relish the memory of live interaction and healthy discussion . . . and will miss the hungry haste and tireless striving to learn . . . which we have seen in your eyes!

On behalf of all the teachers of Department of English, I feel privileged and pleasure to wish you all exceptional academic career. We wish you best wishes to lead the word wherever you are, whenever you get an opportunity, in what so ever role future makes you accountable, with moral scruples, dignity and faith in self!